


I Put a Spell on You

by oonaseckar



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Deception, Dreams, F/M, Fairy, Gen, Impersonation, M/M, The Great British Bake Off References, Totem, arthur's a fairy, cuckoo, fae, gbbo - Freeform, imposturd, paul hollywood - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-21 05:35:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21294395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oonaseckar/pseuds/oonaseckar
Summary: Arthur's a fairy.
Relationships: Ariadne & Arthur (Inception), Arthur & Mal Cobb, Arthur/Eames (Inception), Dom Cobb/Mal Cobb
Kudos: 10





	1. i'll never get out of this world

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Screamin' Jay Hawkins song.

It was tough, being a five hundred year old teenager. The online feuds, the ennui, dubious boyfriends, bad skin, inaccessible cars and clothes... An uneasy suspicion that everything was either too difficult or meaningless, and yet the utter necessity of outshining successful Youtuber cousins, model/med student older sisters, podcasting friends…

How could Arthur feign that level of idiocy?

Most of the time he didn’t even try. That was partly why his chemistry teacher Dr Yusuf sometimes took him on one side to try to find out what was wrong with him. (Of course, that wasn't quite how he phrased it, the old boffin.) He was no dummy. In fact Arthur accorded him full respect. He knew in his bones there was something _wrong_ about Arthur, something about him he couldn’t yet locate or define. Something reportable, culpable, possibly _transmissible_. Or maybe something about the people around him, or his family – was he an abused child, a battered boyfriend, repressing a trans crisis? Yusuf didn't know, but Arthur couldn't get him to stop trying to track down the truth. In the subtlest possible way: or so he thought. Not to worry. Yusuf was never going to find out. And if he did, he wouldn’t believe it anyway.

Thursday afternoons were pretty cool. A late class, four till six, in AS2 Engineering: he loved the practical class. He'd put together this little frog that winched its way along the floor, with a tiny audiotape in its gut making farting noises. Ok, _croaking_ noises. They'd set it going lately at the end of every class, with the demonstrator pursing up his lips and pretending to disapprove, trying not to laugh. Then they sat in the cafeteria and drank coffee and played pool. Arthur beat Robert every time, and just smiled, casual and innocent. And Rob laughed, and convinced himself that he'd let Arthur win.

It was pretty nice being the only gay student in a class full of boys, and only to a limited extent in the way you’d imagine. Mostly it was nice because the guys – pupils and teachers both – felt like they had something to prove, owning their 'woke' credentials. He was everybody’s baby and pet project -- as if they were amazed a gay dude wasn't off auditioning for musical theatre instead of engineering -- and it was as if everything he did well was a feather in their own cap. Everybody vying to be his mentor and advisor, so he could suck up lots of info and tips and get so good they couldn't work out how it happened so fast.

When it was dark, and they were full up on sugar and fat and caffeine, they hopped onto their scooters – him and Robert – or the bus – Nash and Ariadne -- breathing white steam into cold wintery air at the bus-stop, banging gloved hands together to keep warm getting on the bike. And they buzzed off home. Feeling high, feeling good, like they were all going somewhere, and they hugged the secret of their direction to their chests. If folks only knew! Where they were going, how much they'd achieve, how they could change everything till it was unrecognisable. Old guys, they didn't know that kids know life’s for real, serious. Except actually, Arthur conceded, a lot of kids _didn't_. So fair play to the old guys.

That’s where it helps, to be an old guy yourself.

This Thursday evening, Arthur parked the scooter in the drive at home, and put his key in the lock. Pausing a little bit, summoning himself up, himself and all his powers. He needed a little extra, first thing as he came in the door. To his loving family.

It was good to come in from the darkness, to cosy radiators and bright white lights. All the pleasures and comforts of the twenty-first century, and by God most idiots didn't appreciate them nearly enough. It was as if they didn't understand they might not always have them. Arthur could remember when… Well, anyway. The house was set in a couple of acres – Mum was a solicitor and Dad a sales director in web and media packages, and they were _loaded_. The entrance hall was tiled, wooden floored, polished and lovely. How did people get used to this kind of affluence?


	2. a cuckoo in the nest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who is Arthur, really? Mom is Mal, Dad is Cobb... but who is Arthur?

Music was playing upstairs, as Arthur slipped in the door: it sounded like the kids' cartoon superhero TV soundtracks. There were lights on in the kitchen, and he could hear a murmur of voices. First principles: when in doubt, head towards the source of food.

Walking towards the half-shut kitchen door, he opened it quietly. Mum was on the other side of the kitchen table, chopping vegetables, listening to something political on Radio 4. She looked up at him as he walked in. No, in fact her head _jerked_ up. And her face registered shock: shock, and anger.

"Who the hell are _you_?" she demanded, white in the face, soft French accent prevailing even after all these years. "Who _are _you? What do you think you're doing here?"

************************

Arthur got that a lot: with Mum -- _Mal_, but it did no good to fall out of character, even in his own head. 

Maintain persona, at all times.

With Mum, sometimes with Dom -- _Dad_, occasionally with Pip and Jimmy, even. Younger minds were easier to control. He could bullshit a lot about the reasons Mal broke out of trance more frequently than Dom –- anyone could probably come up with a few: feminine intuition, interpersonal relationships, non-verbal cues, female strength _et cetera et cetera._ Personally, he thought it was just a _personal_ thing –- she didn't personally _like_ Arthur, much. Of course she _loved _him, but if he were a stranger -– which he _was _–- she wouldn't much take to him. They'd have little to say to each other. And he thought that the lack of a bond, other than that of blood and family -- as far as she knew –- was what tipped her off, on a fairly regular basis, that _hey, there's something really wrong here._

But no biggie, man. Arthur got it under control pretty quick –- he _always_ got it under control. So far. So far it had always happened when he'd suddenly sprung himself on her -– it seemed to require that sudden stimulus, for her awareness of _wrongness _to break the surface of consciousness. It did sometimes worry him that it might happen in his absence. With other people around, for her to start talking to –- and she could say _anything_. What would happen then?

Arthur's guess was that she'd wind up in a psychiatric institution.

With caring and concerned relatives, visiting her daily.

He didn't want that to happen to Mal. He loved her, after all. 


	3. on a winter night I hear the Easter bell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arthur seems like a nice, normal gay engineering-loving teenage boy.
> 
> Emphasis on _seems._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Vyacheslav Ivanov, quoted in The Silver Age of Russian Culture. 

For the time being it was within the range of acceptable risk, though. Meaning that Arthur didn't know what the hell to do about it, so why worry. This cuckoo had never stuck with any host family for long enough for the problem to become _unmanageable_.

Still, he heard the stories: from older members of the tribe, during their infrequent meetings, both official and informal. He'd heard that with age, you lost objectivity and distance: vital qualities for survival. You got fond and doting and foolish, you started to form bonds that interfered with your capacity to cut loose -- whenever necessary. There were some stories of tribal elders going native, even: aping more than human appearances and fashions, pastimes and entertainments: adopting beliefs, customs, even _loyalties_. It was like shape-changing, perhaps: if you waited too long to break the spell, you forgot how. You even stopped wanting to, maybe.

The word was that mortality was catching. It was a bug, junk DNA that had been quietly stealing life and years from the human tribe. So far the Fae had retained immunity, by and large -- with a _quid pro quo _of corresponding low levels of fertility.

Suspicion, or even worse, definite identification, rarely led to non-accidental mortality, though. Not executed by human kind, at least. A Fae could usually control an information crisis – too much information, held by the wrong people – and engineer a human-normal explanation that was readily accepted by most human participants in an 'incident'. (The Fae equivalent of a nuclear reactor explosion.) These humans were so irrational -- yes, even them, inventors of technology, discoverers of relativity, pioneers of the Enlightenment – proponents of fundamentalism, wagers of war, destroyers of the planet… 

Arthur didn't think it so strange that they refused the evidence of their own eyes, ears and memories and minds, if it strayed too far outside the range of their everyday experience. They were so easy to confuse, so ready to doubt themselves. Sure, a man's stranger-wife appeared from nowhere overnight, his kids were calling her _Mum_ the next day – and he only remembered this when she disappeared as suddenly as she had arrived. 


	4. come away, O human child, to the waters and the wild

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You don't expect the long con from your loved ones and dear ones. That's to assume that they are actually loved, and dear. And not, say, malign implanted imposter Fae.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from W.B. Yeats.

Your business partner vouched for her as an old acquaintance with an impressive reputation in charitable fundraising – except he couldn't remember her now, either...

Maybe he had early onset Alzheimers'. Weren't you having some kind of breakdown around the time you met? That would account for not remembering much about it.

Sure. Sure, guys.

There were enough of Arthur's kind, for damage limitation. They could move in and clean up if there was a spill. If need be. But often enough humans did their work for them.

So after he'd got Mum back under control, he sat her down on the kitchen couch. (Dog hairs and all –- the middle classes could be pretty disgusting, but the fringe benefits made it worthwhile.). He made her herbal tea, spearmint and apple in her favourite cup, and sat down with her, his arm around her shoulder. By this time Mal was under the impression that she'd had some sudden and rather severe heart palpitations, and he'd come in from college to find her crouched up against the Aga, unable to get up.

Reasonably enough, she was a little shaken up. If not for the reasons she believed.

He patted her hair gently, and got up. "I'll finish up making the dinner," he said firmly. "But look, Mum, don't you think it would be better if we just got in the car and went down to A&E? I know you don't want to over-dramatize it, but I'm a bit worried myself... I mean, just to reassure me and Dad? I know he's going to be worried."

Mum prissed up her lips, generally a sign of stubbornness, a sign to know when to pack up and go home. "No, Arthur. Honestly. I feel _fine _now – just a bit worked up, perhaps. I'll go in the morning if you like, but for now I just want a quiet sit down and a good meal. I'm so hungry!"

And Arthur gave up the struggle, knowing that Dom -- that Dad would take it up again, when he got in from a meeting at his company HQ in half an hour. Instead he put on some Dinah Washington, one of Mum's favourites, and she relaxed and watched him and chatted, as he chopped peppers and pressed garlic, washed rice and fried chicken. Ten minutes in, and he heard Pip's footsteps on the stairs, then Timmy, accompanied by the heave and pound of their dog Zymo lunging down with them. He hoped they hadn't been letting the unhygienic hound lie on their beds again, but he wasn't going to bring it up now and get Mum aerated. Tim flung himself onto the couch next to Mal, with Zymo landing on him heavily. Pip skipped in, launching herself at the chopped red peppers neatly bunched up in a white china bowl, and tried to half-inch a good half of them while distracting Arthur with animated conversation about dinosaurs. Light-fingered, gifted little human get. Arthur could almost believe her fae, herself, sometimes. He slapped her fingers.

"Leave off! Dinner in quarter of an hour."

"Big old meanie!" she observed. Such a lady. She was lucky sometimes to get no more than a finger-slap. Where Tim was cuddling up to Mal on the sofa, he wrinkled up his forehead. "You all right, mum-mum?" he asked. 

Arthur didn't think that he'd picked up on any vibe especially. It was just _unusual_, for Mum to get caught sitting on her arse. Or inactive in any way. She was normally a hub, a dynamo. With a Parisian accent, an immaculate wardrobe, and an occasional melancholy turn of mood that her people had to jolly her out of, keep an eye out for.

"Well, I think -- " Arthur began. But Mal cut him off, with a look.

"Fine, love," she reassured the kid, his brother -- his 'brother'. "Just taking a break, while Arthur dazzles us with his skill in the kitchen, aren't I, love?"

"Uh-oh," Pip said.


	5. you see, cuckoos are parasites

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crisis dealt with, Arthur has a new assignation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Cassandra Clare.

Then -- catching Arthur's expression -- she launched into a Jamie Oliver impersonation -- ‘me old codger’, ‘laaaarvely!’ and ‘pukka, innit?’ while slouched on the other side of Mal on the couch. Then she tried mimicking a Paul Hollywood handshake, or at least it was probably that.

It lured him away from thoughts that at nearly nine, the twins didn't need quite as much babying as Mal gave them. Unarticulated murmurings about ‘favourites’ and ‘not fair’ lurked around in his head sometimes. But he was busy, and couldn't pay any attention to them. Crazy thoughts, and he had to have imagined them. 

Arthur was fond of his host family – he loved them. Fae were not as cold-blooded as _biased observers _might have a person believe. But he wasn't attached to the point that his objectivity was compromised.

Neither Pip-pip nor Jimmy could be derailed for long, and shortly managed to worm out the facts. 

When Dom came through the door, they'd quietened down a little – or at least they didn't need to pay so much attention to Pip. She was a daddy’s girl, as much as Mal favoured Jimmy. It could be pretty sickening – a person might have thought the rest of the family suddenly ceased to exist. Anyway it saved them having to go through the whole story of the heart palpitations, since Pip spilled it all. 

Dom went immediately into action mode, energized, fierce. When Mal wasn’t co-operative about calling an ambulance, haring through Slough with siren wailing, he got her in a bear-hug up against the stone sink. Then he started whispering, firm and authoritative. 

Pip came over and sat on the floor, leant against Arthur's knee and started relaying all the filth and scandal of her school clique. She still found it embarrassing, when Mal and Dom acted like boyfriend and girlfriend. Arthur sometimes felt a bit flushed himself. But not _really_. It was quite sweet. At least they weren't shagging other people. Or screaming at each other about bills, which made a change from the parents of _some _people he knew at college.

As it turned out, when Dad decided it was _imperative _that Mum let him drive her to A&E in the people carrier, and get a quick once-over from some frazzled junior house-officer, then Mum, too, thought it imperative. As opposed Arthur or the twins saying the exact same thing.

Mum was a Daddy’s girl, too. Dinner was on hold, stuck in the Aga, and he and the kids piled into the back of the car before they set off. Dom lectured on the journey about the good sense of _Steve _who had his little problem sorted out and was skiing in Gstaad as they spoke, while that moron Ted refused to get his thingummy checked up and, well, poor Leela hadn’t even got his pension to get by on, with the whole final salary fiasco.

Yes Dad. Sure, Dad. Dom, _Jesus_. First sign of a leader of men: they never shut the fuck up.

Next morning Arthur woke up to a weekend. Good, in itself, yet with that trace of a niggling feeling wriggling in his mind – a feeling of something better yet, if he could just locate it, beckoning him on, waiting on the horizon.

He stretched out in the hillocks and tangles of his rumpled duvet, listening to silence. Then he located the missing data, and his body desisted its twitching. Yeah, the young medical student in A&E last night: Arthur was seeing him again tonight. Except out of a clinical setting. 

Who could resist his approach, after all. A breath of Fae glamour, embroidering his usual late-adolescent appearance to something more mature, compassionate and responsible... And hot, with it, while seeming almost unaware of the fact. Obviously. And, well. So he reached out for the phone beside his bed. No time was too early to pass on the latest to Ariadne.

Squeals greeted the news: she was almost too overcome for coherent speech. She sucked all the details out of him: hair, eyes, general fitness, car, seniority, salary. Religion, sock size, favourite cheese. Maybe she was a bit over-enthused. Of course she couldn't ever, quite, escape her indoctrination: nice middle class girls became doctors all the time these days (till they had kids and went part-time). But it was still slightly higher in status, for some parents, to _marry _one, and be loaded enough to stay home with the kids. Too bad, too bad. You couldn't escape destiny when it was up too close to see.

Of course, Ariadne was aiming for architecture. But it still applied.

She did ask the question Arthur had been evading. “But Arthur… Don’t you think Nash might be a bit, um, upset?”

Oh, Nash was going to be upset. Arthur almost rubbed his hands, thinking about it.

And Ariadne - sweet, gullible Ariadne - would think him upset because, well, poor pining Nash! With his pathetic sweet crush on Arthur, based on the least littlest bits of encouragement, over the years! 

Not _psychopathically competitive _Nash, panting and wanking over the urge to eliminate and destroy, no. _Ugh_. Obsessed with Arthur to the point of insanity, but not in any sweet pat-on-the-head kind of way. Whatever he feigned to Ariadne, looking for a socially acceptable reason for his monomanic stalkery slobbering.

Fae powers were a bummer sometimes, alright. You couldn't call it _telepathy_: just those brief moments of harmonizing with a human mind, the silenced world shut out. And all of that dribbling sociopathy falling out, like stinking entrails. In the very worst instances. Not all humans were so repulsive. Some were very, very delightful, in fact. Ariadne, and Mal, and even the twins, for example. And... others. In other ways. The variety was what charmed. The human mutt, 57 varieties, perpetually surprising.

But Ariadne was better off with her delusions. And Arthur was keeping that little turd Nash close enough to keep an eye on.

“He’ll get used to it. He has done before.” An ominous silence greeted him – not hostility, but anxiety. Then she piped up. “Well, yes, if getting used to it means _shutting up about it._ And glaring at us. But those other lads were just spotty gits from rival schools, Arthur.”

Not a glamorous older guy. Not a _doctor_. Not someone with a car, a salary and a swish riverside flat. Hmm. “Well, okay. I see your point. Maybe.” Arthur still didn’t want to hear it, though. He made his excuses, and arranged to meet up in town in the afternoon for a coffee. Leaving Arthur the morning to brood. Plenty o’ time.

Shrugging on his dressing gown, he took a Mickey Spillane novel from Cobb's bookcase, and went downstairs to make a cuppa before taking both up to the main bathroom: his ensuite was too small for _thinking _in. Everyone was still asleep: so he was free and easy with the coffee grinder. Mal didn't like him to drink strong coffee: due to her very French upbringing, she was disappointed in her very British children. Their lack of exquisite manners, no fondness for bizarre European torch singers, no respect for their elders, a refusal to eat what was on their plates, and tolerate hot milk barely flavoured with the bean.

Bolshy ill-mannered British kids, in short: and the irony was that she'd married an American to get them. Well, two of them, anyway. Plus a cuckoo in the nest, an affectionate parasite. Who, even by external appearances, was either freakishly advanced and mature, or rendered Mal a gymslip mum, giving birth in the midst of her bacclaureate with shrieks of 'À l'aide!' ringing through the air. But no-one ever questioned the appearance, nor the paperwork. Arthur was nothing if not thorough: he prided himself on his detailed prep, pointman to the paranormal.

Often, seeing Arthur bearing an espresso cup, Mal snapped that he would die of a broken leg and pneumonia, once he'd given himself osteoporosis. When he was eighty. Like, right, Mum?

Arthur remembered eighty. _Those _were the days. Young and fresh, a mere sprig, his powers not even mature.

No coffee in Fae lands, mind you. Not a bean, not a drop. Just one more reason why Arthur preferred human company, human civilization, human music and literature. And human lovers.


End file.
